August 27, 2020: Day 5 – Jeremiah 5 – “An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land.”  

Today my heart immediately takes me to what is happening in our nation as I read this 5th chapter in Jeremiah.  Look at vs.12 where you read: “they have spoken falsely of the Lord, and have said, “He will do nothing.  No evil will  come upon us.”  We have lived in a security in this country that is unparalleled in history.  We have not seen a war on our soil in generations, in many generations, and it has lulled us into thinking we are blessed.  We have experienced random and spaced apart attacks on our soil but they have been so sporadic and not on the scale of a war that we feel to a certain extent that we are invincible.

Often that invincibility carries over with it a sense of comfort and expectations that we deserve the good that we receive.  But then the senseless killings and the unrest, and the virus and its continued march (almost 200,000 people have died in our country as a result), shakes us from our slumber of comfort and elicits a protest from our mouths.  But for most of us our protest is exactly as the people in Jeremiah protest.  We ask the question of vs.19: “Why has the Lord our  God done all these things to us?”  God answers, “You have forsaken me.”  Those of us who have not been blessed by nature’s sun don’t understand why people are so upset.  “Can’t we just go back to the way things were?”

I want to shout from the mountain tops the words of vs.30: “An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land.”  As Christians we must recognize that we are like the prophet Jeremiah who is commanded in vs.1 to “run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, look around and take note!  Search its squares and see if you can find one person who acts justly and seeks truth.”  It should remind us of Abraham making a deal with God in order to save Sodom and Gomorrah.  Those cities could not be saved.  

I say this not as a doomsayer, but hopefully as a truth teller.  Until we are able to live in a way that is reflective of Matthew 5-7 we will continue to have violence on our streets as we seek a justice that must come from loving God and loving our neighbor.  Unfortunately the evangelical church at this point is satisfied with only loving God and is content in letting the neighbor fend for themselves.  As a result: “An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land.”